We moved in 2011 so a new basement brewery/bar was required. After many months, the design has now been finalized and construction starts tomorrow and is expected to take approximately 3-5 months. We are using a local design/build firm called Just Basements that, as the name would imply, only does basements. Tell Norm that Kal sent you!

October 2013 update: Our basement project won Just Basements the 2013 Housing Design Award Winner for Basement Renovation from the Greater Ottawa Home Builder's Association (GOHBA). Congratulations to Norm and his team!

We wanted our new basement to include:

- A brewery
- A front bar to serve the beers I make on tap along with some wine storage
- A seating / lounge area with fireplace
- A Home Theatre with seating for six (two rows of three)
- Storage for our movies
- A Bathroom with urinal, shower, toilet
- A Sauna

Pretty much all the things we had previously in the old basement. The urinal/sauna/shower in the bathroom however would be new. The new basement has more room, so we now have room to expand some of these items.

My wife and I spent considerable time prior to contacting Just Basements, trying to figure out how to how to fit this all this in and not overcrowd things or end up with an odd arrangement. This biggest issue is that our basement has a central staircase which leaves us with a giant "U" shaped area to work with. Try as we might, we weren't able to figure out how to make it all work. Fortunately Just Basements has experience doing just this and they were able to make it all fit and work well ergonomically.

The new brewery will use identical equipment and layout as before as documented at TheElectricBrewery.com, but we will have considerably more room to work in and the brewery will be combined with fermentation, conditioning, and serving (my previous basement brewery was only used for wort creation - the sugary liquid that eventually becomes beer). Generally more space for everything, everything in one spot.

The bar area will be larger than before and include 8 beers on tap (4 on tap previously), storage for red wine, and a small fridge (beverage center) for white wine and other drinks.

The Home Theater will be similar to our previous setup seen here. I'll be using mostly the same equipment (for now) other than the projector. It'll likely be a JVC RS46 or RS56 (digital) with a 17'9" throw to put it over the second row of seats. Still deciding between the two. We'll see how much money I have left at the end of all this.

Seating will be the same 2 rows of 3 I used previously (Jaymar 56000 series) with the fronts of the seats at 9' and 16' from the screen. That puts the heads about 11' and 18' from the screen. A 12" high riser will be used for the second row. The screen will remain 96x54" which is approximately 110" diagonal.

The sound will be 5.1 like before but I'll pre-wire to do 7.1 for an extra set of side surrounds - just in case. I won't be using conduit for the speaker wire but will be using it for the projector (speaker wiring technology hasn't really changed in 40+ years while the way we send signals to TVs/projectors seems to change yearly).

There will be a room behind the screen to allow for a possible future 2.35:1 accoustically transparent screen in order to do Constant Image Height (CIH) as is done in movie theatres to SMPTE standards if I ever choose to go that route. For now the extra wall is nice as it'll help reduce mechanical noise from the furnace/hot water tank/HRV. It will also allow easy access for the wiring.

The Home Theatre equipment rack will be set in the wall behind the screen just outside the bathroom.

DVD/Blu-ray storage will be done by two rows of 7' wide, floor to ceiling shelves shown in the pictures below between the sauna and the mechanical room (unfinished area). We are basically doubling the amount of DVD/Blu-ray space as we were starting to run out of room.

As far as style, my wife and I both prefer clean modern lines. The basement style will therefore be very 'linear'. Lots of straight lines and 90 degree angles, minimizing the use of curves.

I'll post pictures as things progress. Update: Some new final pictures have been added below.

I did a lot of research into towers and went through 2 or 3 designs before settling on this T-design mostly for the narrow width. There are many sellers/manufacturers of towers. Most use vinyl line inside the towers for the beer, which I don't like. This one has stainless product lines and copper glycol lines. The beer will only ever be in contact with barrier tubing or stainless. No vinyl at all. The shanks are stainless too (most others are brass). The copper glycol lines mean more efficient cooling of the shanks, though all towers seem to use copper.

Homebrewers really need to use forward sealing faucets. Normal faucets get gummed up and stick as we don't pour beer 8 hrs/day like bars do. It's not uncommon for bar owners to have to squirt water into their 'regular' taps at the start of the shift to get them unstuck. That problem doesn't exist with these taps. I've been using them since about 2004 and they're fantastic. These Perlicks are stainless as well.

These are also stainless. Micromatic seems to have the only stainless (not chrome) stout faucets available. Stout faucets, by the nature of their design, are already 'forward sealing' so sticking shouldn't be a problem.

I didn't like the plastic spouts so they were replaced with stainless:

These faucets will be used to serve something that mimics somewhat flat english style beer. Think Boddingtons or an ESB with a nice creamy head, or of course, Guinness. You basically keg the beer flat and then push with a 75/25 blend of Nitrogen/C02 (called beer gas) instead of only C02. The 75/25 blend has so little C02 that it doesn't carbonate the beer over time (which is what we want). The beer will only have the residual carbonation in it from fermentation, but pushing it through the restrictor plate in the stout faucet knocks out most of the remaning C02 and gives the beer a nice creamy (Guinness style) head and next to no carbonic bite. I will need new stout faucets and a regulator + tank (not yet ordered - I can get them locally).

Beer pours better in a wet glass and the rinser is also great when someone wants to sample 2-3 beers. You can rinse in between. The added bonus is that the rinser cleans out the drip tray. On my old setup I'd have to get out the brush and scrub the dried beer build-up out of the drip tray once every few weeks. By having a rinser it's easy to clean and will likely happen just by the fact of using it.

The tower is less than 15 feet from the serving keezer so 1/4" ID beer lines are more than adequate. 1/4" ID beer line is good to about 50' so for home use it'll be rare that anyone needs larger diameter beer line. The smaller diameter line the better, as then chilling it is easier too. A trunk line (ie: a bundle of product + 2 glycol lines) like this is going to be used:

From my research, these guys make some of the best trunk lines. They're incredibly robust and well sealed to keep in the cool as you run glycol through them continuously.

In my previous setup I used BevSeal product line and made my own trunk line with 4 beer lines and 2 copper glycol lines. That was somewhat of a pain to make and then wrap with pipe insulation. It worked, but the result wasn't pretty. Given all the time and labour required, this time around I want to go with the 'professional' solution already wrapped up and properly protected. The cost is not that much more.

Speaking of glycol, I don't actually use it - I'll use the same stuff as on my old bar setup which is RV/cottage antifreeze. It's a liquid that you're supposed to pour into your toilets in the RV or cottage for the winter to stop them from freezing. It's drain safe.

The keezer set to just above freezing doesn't actually chill the antifreeze enough so a 50' loop of 3/8" ID copper refrigeration tubing will be placed in a freezer that's well below freezing to allow it to chill adequately as it recirculates. This is the same freezer that I'll be using to store hops and yeast. It'll a small 5.5 cu.ft. black Danby chest freezer that will be set to run at about 0F. The result is a beer that pours at about 38-40F, my preference for serving temperature.

This is the pond pump that I used before on my previous setup and will continue to use:

Since my line length is only 15' I don't need a massively powerful pond pump. The one above worked fine before with a similar length of 1/4" glycol line plus about 20 feet of copper coil in the freezer. This time I'm going to use bigger 3/8" line and 50 feet of coil so there should be even less restriction. The pump ran for 5+ years straight, 24 hours/day, 365 days a year. That's what they're meant to do. No issues.

To get the antifreeze to and from this freezer, the glycol tubes in the main trunk are cut and spliced to a second line with only the glycol shooting off to a freezer. So I ordered 10 feet of this glycol only trunk line:

In my case, the distance between the taps and the kegs was designed to be as short as possible, only about 10-15 feet (one of the design goals of the basement) so a "real" glycol chiller isn't required. I wanted to avoid using a real glycol chiller because:

- They're loud
- They run hot
- They use a lot of power
- They're expensive (around $1000 instead of $40-$100 for a pond pump)

In my case, with a short run I'll be able to use a simple $50 pond pump to push glycol through a 3/8" ID copper coil in the freezer. This is what I did in the old bar setup and it worked very well. So well in fact that in humid months condensation would form on the taps:

You laugh but it's partially true: I promise that every red cent we earn through the support that people give us by using our links is 100% funnelled back into beer goodness.

So for every dollar you spend using our links (at no additional cost to you), think of it as an investment on the next set of instructions I create, to show you what you should be buying next! (Don't tell your wives).

Well I'm off to bed. It's going to be noisy day tomorrow (I work from home). They break concrete in the basement for the new bathroom layout.

Congrats on the new house and the new expansion... You won't know what to do with all that room in your brewery! Looked like the last one was quite cramped. I like that movie that is showing in the theater...

Oh wow Kal right on time. I will soon be starting my bar (as soon as I get the brewery done.. yea I know taking forever) but the basement is in the plan as well. I already have bunch of material laying in the basement waiting for my time.. I also work from home but odd hours and long shift.. (Joy of managing Outsourcing..) so I end up never having time to work on the build .. Your basement is really sick Beside the Monster Lounge and the awesome home theater. The Windows between the Bar and the Brewhouse is going to be spectacular. Since I`ve used your links for all my build and live only 3 hours from you, I`m looking forward to sip a beer at your bar and have a long chat on how amazing this whole adventure is.

I'll be looking forward to learn more on your Glycol system and having both CO2 and Nitrogene. I'm probably going to try to clone your bar I also wanted exactly 8 taps.. Coincidence?

btw, what tool did you used for your 3D modeling? pretty neat.

Cheers

Ben_________________Ben Bouchard

Control Panel Ready, Kettles Ready, Pumps Ready. First Dry Run. Working on the Hood and fermentation Chamber.

The Windows between the Bar and the Brewhouse is going to be spectacular.

I really liked that idea too. It was the designer's idea. I wouldn't have thought of it myself. It'll give it a bit of a brew pub feel, possibly with dimmable spot lights on the kettles.

Quote:

btw, what tool did you used for your 3D modeling? pretty neat.

The floor plans were created by the design/build company doing the work. They use Chief Architect (http://www.chiefarchitect.com/). It's expensive, around $2000 so not something a typical home owner would be themselves.. We spent a lot of time talking/designing and they did the layout and I reviewed using the free viewer that I could download. It took a bunch of iterations to get to where we are today. That said, there will still be (hopefully only) slight changes as the build progresses and they run up against things.

If I was designing myself I'd probably use Google Sketchup (free).

When I did my brewery floorplan and elevated view I used a pencil and grid paper and little cutouts for table/shelves to do things to scale. Call me old fashioned.

Concrete removed today for the shower and toilet plumbing. The existing toilet drain in the pictures is being moved to the right to make room for a urinal.

The shower will be walk-in (flush with the regular bathroom tiled floor, no lip at all) with a linear drain, hence the reason the concrete floor needed to be broken and re-poured for entire shower area to be lower.

Very nice looking plans, and thanks for posting. My mental plans have gone through many iterations, and will probably go through a few more, but hopefully I'll be building out this year. At one point I had the glass window into the brewery idea. That was set aside when I realized I wanted a walk-in cooler, however, and at first that was going to be located between the brewery and the lounge/bar area. Now the brewery may get moved to a corner so we can fit an extra room, but the walk-in may end up being even bigger in a different area. No glycol needed in my current thinking--taps will be on the outside wall of the walk-in._________________Brewery equipment photos (et al) here: https://picasaweb.google.com/114861423235799103704

At one point I had the glass window into the brewery idea. That was set aside when I realized I wanted a walk-in cooler, however, and at first that was going to be located between the brewery and the lounge/bar area.

Yup, the windows make it a bit hard since you can't use any high things (like fridges) backing against them in the brewery. No point in having windows if all you're going to see is a fridge evaporation coils. So I'm kind of stuck to using keezers or low bar fridges or similar.

I'd love to have something like this 5-keg back bar stainless commercial fridge but that's likely not to happen in this lifetime:

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